Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Iowa? Are you interested in teaching English in Ellston, Iowa? Check out our opportunities in Ellston, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
This unit was an overview of the roles and characteristics of teachers and learners in the classroom. Teachers have many different roles, including prompting students, participating in discussion, taking control to introduce new concepts, giving assignments for students to do independently, coaching and motivating students, and so on. A good teacher must have not only good knowledge of the subject, but also a rapport with students, empathy for them, and ways to make the classes engaging and fun. Students work best when they are highly motivated, willing to take criticism, flexible, confident, and excited to learn, experiment, and ask questions. There was also a section in this unit on the difference between younger and older learners; adults tend to be more motivated, because children are often required to study languages, while adults choose to learn themselves (and pay for it themselves!). However, children have more natural ability to "absorb" language like a sponge, and are less nervous about making mistakes than adults. Adults tend to worry more about losing face, and they also "translate" more in their heads to and from their native language, which can lead to mistakes in the target language. Finally, there was discussion of the language levels of students and how level affects teaching; more advanced students are easier to talk with and explain concepts to, but it is harder to observe and evaluate their progress.
I feel like a lot of the concepts introduced in this unit were ones I already have experience with thanks to my work as a substitute teacher/tutor; I am familiar with being a facilitator, prompter, participant, tutor and monitor, for example, because I fulfilled those roles when working. However, it is nice to have an organized framework with which to categorize these concepts. Knowing that there are nine main roles to occupy helps me compartmentalize these ideas, and it will now probably be easier to keep them in mind while working. I am simply the type of person who relies heavily on structures, lists, and formulas to carry out tasks. I am also grateful for the discussion of young learners as opposed to adults, because I have not yet determined whether I want to look for work with children or mature students, and this information will help me make the right decision when I am looking at job prospects. I have already had some challenges dealing with students who are required to learn English as part of a university program, and I know that it can be difficult to motivate them to learn. I hope that the rest of this program will help give me ideas to make lessons as interesting as possible for these types of students, though I may just choose to work with more motivated adults in the end.
